Murders Most Foul

As representatives of the Sandinistas and the contras verbally assaulted each other in San Jose last week, the Costa Rican capital was also the site of a landmark case being tried by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. On trial is the government of Honduras, which has been charged with "integral responsibility" in the disappearance and presumed murder of an unspecified number of its citizens by army death squads. Though the evidence presented at the proceedings deals specifically with the disappearance of four people in the early 1980s, no individuals are on trial; rather, the court is attempting to determine if...